Sunday, March 6, 2011

Bizarre Windows behavior

Some bizarre things I've seen with Windows 7 Ultimate thus far:

No loopback device. I had an ISO of Office 2010 on my network share, I copied it over to Windows 7 and... err... now what? I ended up exporting it to the Linux virtual machine as a virtual CD, mounting it in the Linux VM, then re-exporting it via Samba to Windows as a share.

Windows 7 won't browse my workgroup. No way, no how. I can go directly to the Run prompt and type in "\\linserver\office" and get my Office share, but it won't automagically populate its network neighborhood thingy in the left margin of Windows Explorer with my workgroup shares. It's not that Samba is misconfigured. My MacBook properly populates *its* left margin with the Samba server and expands to show the shares when I click on it, as well as showing the share I exported from Windows 7.f

Windows 7 won't do a thing when I click "Map Network Drive". Nothing. Nada. I remember that in the Xen installation of Windows 7 it certainly worked fine, it popped up a dialogue and all that, but now that it's native nothing -- zero -- happens when I click on that item.

Probably related to Homegroups. This is the only Windows 7 system on my network, so Homegroups is utterly useless. I attempt to change it and... nada. Nothing. Won't let me leave the homegroup.

Computers are supposed to be deterministic. Windows 7 isn't -- its behavior appears to be semi-random, operating upon a logic that Boole and Von Neumann would not have recognized. So have you had weird things happen with Windows 7? Curious penguins want to know!

1 comment:

In case you're wondering, a reboot resolved #3 and #4 above. #1 appears to be a limitation of Windows, though 3rd party software resolves it. #2 -- no network browser -- appears to be an argument between Windows, Linux, and my Mac over who owns the workgroup, and thus far I have no solution for it.

About Me

I am a senior lead engineer and architect who has taken multiple products from concept to market and beyond. I am also one of the original Linux penguins -- my first Linux product hit the market in June 1996 and its latest incarnation is still running to this day.